


Dragon!

by Zetal (Rodinia)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fantasy AU, M/M, Phichit & Yuuri friendship, yuuri's anxiety
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21963502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: All Yuuri wanted was to get off the road, into his bed – his bed, for the first time in five years, not the one halfway around the world that had never quite felt like his – and sleep for about a week.  He was exhausted, he was beaten down, he was demoralized, he was… he was a failure.  All his life had been building toward the dragon hunt, and then at the last second, disaster struck.  Yuuri had, not quite literally but close enough, fallen on his face in front of the entire world.Life had other ideas.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuri!!! on Ice Secret Skater 2019





	Dragon!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Songbirdsara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Songbirdsara/gifts).



> Written for Secret Santa exchange! Enjoy (and there is more coming by the 12th Day of Christmas)!

If it weren’t for Minako, Yuuri might not have made it back home. Of course, if it weren’t for Minako, Yuuri wouldn’t have had to spend hours shaking hands and making small talk with various townsfolk he barely remembered and had never felt at home with. He had his small circle of friends, who knew him well enough to know that he would come see them when he was ready and were busy being elsewhere. Everyone else, that was a struggle.

At least Minako promised to tend to his horse while he got inside to say hello to his family and get himself to bed. He’d do his best, anyway. One upside to being as exhausted as he was, he didn’t have the energy to dwell on why he was home instead of back in Detroit for training. He’d been so close to being chosen for the ceremonial dragon hunt to mark the coronation of the new king, and then…

Falling on his face might have been better. Everything that could possibly have gone wrong for him in the demonstration of his skills did. His archery always had been a weak point, but he could usually at least hit the target once. Not this time. It was still better than his swordsmanship, where he managed to drop the training sword he was sparring with and break it. Not get disarmed, it was just a straight-up drop. His horse threw him after being spooked by, as far as Yuuri could tell, an interdimensional invader. The wilderness trial, usually his strongest point, Yuuri couldn’t even bring himself to remember. He didn’t even talk to his coach afterward. He didn’t stick around to hear the results. Why bother? No one would choose him. Even Yuuri’s best friend Phichit wouldn’t choose him.

Like his friends, his parents and sister understood him. They were perfectly content to say hello, accept hugs, and let Yuuri go take care of himself before pushing him for anything else. The one exception was his father offering him some katsudon, which Yuuri promised to take him up on after he’d gotten some rest.

Collapsing into his bed felt right. The bed in Detroit never had. Yuuri couldn’t explain why, after five years, the bed there didn’t feel like his bed, but it didn’t. The bed here? Even though he hadn’t slept in it in five years, it felt perfect. He went straight to sleep with no intention of waking up before noon, even though it was still early evening.

After a couple days of doing little but sleeping, eating katsudon, and helping his family around the onsen, Yuuri was starting to get a little restless. When he went to bed, he promised himself that in the morning, he would get his lazy useless ass back out on his horse. Just because he was a total failure of a knight didn’t excuse him not at least trying to redeem himself. Sure, there would likely not be another dragon hunt he could go on, but he could at least do something somewhat useful. He could hear Phichit telling him to get back in the saddle and on with his life.

…No, seriously, he could hear Phichit telling him to get up. He sat up quickly, noting that the sun was up, and that Phichit was standing at the end of his bed with his hands on his hips. “I swear by my hamsters, Yuuri, if you don’t get out of bed in the next thirty seconds, I’m getting a bucket of snow to dump on you.”

“Phichit?! What the hell are you doing here?” Yuuri scrambled out of bed. “You are supposed to be getting ready to hunt the dragon! Does Celestino know you’re out here?”

“Celestino is here too, and… oh, he’d kill me if I spoiled the surprise.” Phichit winked at Yuuri. “Get your training gear on and meet me at the stables. If you’re not there in fifteen minutes, I’m coming back with Celestino. I’m not big enough to carry you on my own, but he is.”

“Give me twenty, at least?” Yuuri grumbled, the familiarity of it tugging at his heart even as he mentally complained about Phichit being an unreasonable morning person. If he was supposed to be ready for training, he could probably skip the shower, he decided. Brushing his teeth, not so much. Clothes were mandatory, and his training gear was nearly all black anyway, and who cared if the blue accents on his shirt didn’t quite match the stripe on his pants? Phichit would let it go, and Celestino wouldn’t even notice. Thankfully, he hadn’t been here long enough for his laziness to have caused him to put on too much weight just yet.

He made it to the stables with a minute to spare, only to wish he hadn’t. Celestino and Phichit, of course he’d expected. The others, not so much. He recognized them all – most of them were his competitors in the dragon hunt competition. Foul-tempered Yuri Plisetsky, who had cornered him after the archery competition to tell him to just drop out of the competition already, the hunt wouldn’t need two Yuris. Christophe Giacometti, who Yuuri had worked with before and mostly gotten along with. Jean-Jacques LeRoy, who Yuuri had thought he’d seen some familiar signs of anxiety in, but who covered so well with bluster that Yuuri assumed he had it under control, even if the method he chose was obnoxious. It took a few seconds to remember the other knight’s name, which was hardly fair; Otabek Altin had done some very nice work, even winning the archery competition. Yakov Feltsman, a retired knight and the person overseeing the dragon hunt – after all, it was a foregone conclusion who would win the competition, and the winner’s trainer usually took charge of organizing the hunt. This looked like the group chosen for the hunt, except that there should be one more; there were always seven.

The seventh, of course, was Viktor Nikiforov. Viktor Nikiforov was standing beside his beautiful horse Makkachin, right there in Yuuri’s family’s stable. He was turned away from Yuuri, talking to Chris about something that had Chris rolling his eyes, but there was no mistaking the shiny hair. Viktor was here. Viktor was right there. What was Viktor doing here?

Phichit walked over to Viktor and Chris, interrupting the conversation to point Yuuri’s way. Viktor turned, and now Yuuri was convinced that he was dreaming, because Viktor’s face went from cautiously neutral to a blinding heart-shaped smile in a blink. He raised a hand in a wave. “Yuuri!”

“V-v-viktor?!” Yuuri now wished he’d been late and taken the time to shower. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, we can’t hunt the dragon with an incomplete party, now, can we?” Viktor winked. “No one could find you when the seven dragon hunters were announced, but Phichit thought he knew where you might go. And he was right, here you are! We can hunt the dragon now!”

“I… but… what? I didn’t…” Yuuri forced his hands to stop waving and go back down by his sides. “After my performance in the contest, how did I end up getting chosen?” Since it seemed he had been. That would explain what Celestino was doing here. As both Phichit and Yuuri’s trainer, he made sense as Yakov’s assistant in organizing everything.

“Oh, that’s easy! I won, so I got to pick a team member, and I picked you!” That made a certain amount of sense, anyway. The judges picked the top three winners, each winner got to choose another member of the team, and then the new king would choose the last member of the party. Yuuri was willing to bet that JJ was the one chosen that way, seeing as his father was the new king.

What didn’t make sense was that Viktor would choose _him_. “After my performance, why would you choose me?”

“Why wouldn’t I? You wouldn’t have been there if that were the best you could do. One bad competition shouldn’t keep one of the best knights in the country from the hunt!” Viktor put a hand to Makkachin’s side. “Get your horse and let’s get going. Yakov’s starting to look a little impatient.”

Yuuri headed over to Vicchan in a daze. The only possible explanation was that he was still dreaming, but the usual tricks to wake himself up weren’t working. Well, if he was going to dream, he might as well go along with it. Yuuri quickly got Vicchan saddled and ready to go.


End file.
